


The Price of Passage

by cofax



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-15
Updated: 2009-02-15
Packaged: 2017-10-03 00:51:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cofax/pseuds/cofax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What Ruby did, what Ruby knows.  Written mid-season 4, jossed by canon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Price of Passage

**Author's Note:**

> For [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/untrue_accounts/profile)[**untrue_accounts**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/untrue_accounts/), who asked for Ruby.

Even as he stands there, arm outstretched, growing ever more powerful under her guidance, she can see it in his eyes: he does not trust her.

 

She is the Yoda to his Skywalker, the Miyagi to his Ralph Macchio. Without her, he'd be dead a dozen times over. But there's doubt in his eyes every time he looks at her, even when he groans as he pumps into her.

 

~

 

It wasn't easy to get back out, even harder than the first time. It's not like there's a road, after all. Hell isn't a _place_, not the way most humans think of it. There are no maps, no pathways, no doors. Just uncharted misery, the ghosts of neurons firing in gray matter long since rotted into sludge.

 

You can't get out alone: you just can't. That would be too easy. And you can't make friends in Hell, either--friendship requires a body, requires hormones and blood to carry them, requires the warm rush of affection.

 

But Hell allows for allies of convenience. And Ruby knew about those, she'd built coalitions before. It was how she got out last time.

 

She was surprised, though, when this time someone else sought her out first.

 

~

 

"Tell me what it's like," Sam says one night. It's after 3 AM and the streetlights illuminate nothing but the empty sidewalk outside a warehouse.

 

She doesn't answer. His brother has been dead for five weeks. Ruby doesn't tell him that however long Dean's been in Hell, it's been far _far_ longer than 35 days, for him.

 

She's a demon; but she's not unnecessarily cruel.

 

"You don't want to hear that," she finally says.

 

~

 

More than one person, actually. Three.

 

Hell's not a _place_, but the mind is weirdly resilient--or limited--and so everything still has shape and form and sound, for the most part. Ruby didn't like the parts of Hell that didn't translate to the standard five senses: she was a traditionalist that way.

 

So the way she perceived it was that three women were standing around her, all young. One was taller and one was short and one was medium-sized and pissed off.

 

Ruby hadn't met them before, but she wasn't stupid and she knew who they were. She just didn't know why they were _together_.

 

"The hell do you want?"

 

Ava rolled her eyes. She'd come off the rack almost immediately, which didn't surprise Ruby at all. "Don't play dumb." There was blood on her face, a smear across her cheek.

 

Ruby folded her arms. "Indulge me."

 

"You know Sam," said Bela, who managed to make a dingy rag look like a fine wool shawl about her shoulders. "He's the only one with the power to take her down."

 

"We can blow this place apart from the inside," added Meg--well, the demon that everyone called Meg because even she didn't remember her own name. Her hands were bloody to the wrists; Ruby had heard that Meg catered to Alistair's _special needs_. Predictably petty, Ruby thought.

 

"You don't even like the Winchesters," she pointed out.

 

Three sets of inky eyes looked back at her. "So?" asked Meg.

 

~

 

The day Dean breaks is the day Sam does, too. Not that she's about to tell Sam that.

 

Wearing a dead body isn't the same as a live one: everything's just a little dulled, muffled.

 

But Sam's fierce enough to cut right through all that, his desperate rage warming them both. Ruby can almost believe there's blood pumping through her veins, that what she feels is what she would have felt in the body she was born in.

 

Almost.

 

~

 

Time was weird in Hell. So was communication. Ruby was pretty sure Sam was still alive, because that was news that would have gotten around, if he wasn't. The Winchesters were like NBA players or something: everyone knew their names, even people who hated them.

 

Except Lilith and Alistair--well, they had issues with the Winchesters. And they were just the kind of control freaks who wouldn't let anyone know, if it was to their benefit.

 

So it was a risk, trying to get out. Chancing everything for a possibility that might not pay off. "She's not going to believe me," Ruby said. "Lilith doesn't give second chances."

 

"She will if you earn it," said Ava.

 

Bela licked her lips. "You're creative. You'll think of something."

 

Meg just grinned. "It'll be like old times."

 

~

 

Sam's strong and getting stronger. Not strong enough, though, not yet. He's holding back, even now.

 

Ruby wonders if telling him that Dean broke would make the difference, or just break Sam, too. She doesn't know; even when he's wrapped all around her, gasping into her skin, he's separate from her. Insulated somehow.

 

He doesn't know what she did, he can't. If he did, he'd never have touched her.

 

Ruby's worked through four or five bodies since she got out; but she can still taste Dean Winchester's blood in her mouth.

 

 

END


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